Happy owners owners Kim and Joe Peacock were on had to watch their Senor Buscador and jockey Geovanni Franco, win the Grade II $300,000 San Diego Handicap Saturday, July 29, 2023 at Del Mar Thoroughbred Club, Del Mar, CA. The 5-year-old son of Mineshaft is trained by Todd Fincher. Benoit Photo
Joe Peacock, Jr. is the TOBA May Member of the Month.
Senor Buscador’s tale reads like a Hollywood script. Father and son fall in love with a sport and breed and race quality horses. Then the father passes on, and the pair’s most successful runner outdoes herself by producing a world-beating racehorse. But this is no fairytale; in fact, it’s the true story of this year’s Saudi Cup (G1) winner.
Bred by Joe Peacock Sr. and Jr., Senor Buscador currently races for San Antonio, Texas-based Peacock Jr., as well as Sharaf Mohammed S. Al Hariri. Joe Peacock Sr. and his family started racing horses, mostly Quarter Horses, in New Mexico in the 1960s. Peacock Jr. said, “I spent all summers around the barn and the horses and going to the races.” The family transitioned to Thoroughbreds in the 1980s.
Their best runner before Senor Buscador came with homebred New Mexico-bred champion Rose’s Desert. The filly—hailing from the fruitful family of blue hen mare Thorn Apple—was a maternal granddaughter of Snippet, whom Peacock bought for $9,500 at the 1997 Keeneland January auction. Snippet produced Miss Glen Rose, who foaled Rose’s Desert. By Desert God, she won seven stakes and earned $626,035. The last horse bred by both Peacocks was her son Senor Buscador (by Mineshaft).
As a broodmare, Rose’s Desert has produced four stakes winners. To the cover of Ghostzapper, she foaled $783,509-earner Runaway Ghost, winner of the 2018 Sunland Derby (G3), and multiple stakes winner Our Iris Rose (dam of a 2024 Curlin colt, she was bred back to Not This Time). Sent to Curlin, Rose’s Desert produced $603,681 earner and stakes winner Sheriff Brown. Along with the Peacocks’ two other broodmares, Rose’s Desert is boarded at Shawhan Place in Paris, Kentucky. Her Candy Ride filly Aye Candy broke her maiden last fall. Booked to Uncle Mo for 2025, Rose’s Desert is carrying an Into Mischief filly due May 1.
Senor Buscador broke his maiden at Remington Park in November 2020, winning a stake one month later. “Todd—our trainer, Todd Fincher—told me after his first race, ‘This horse, he’s special. You don’t get horses like this too often,’” Peacock said. These performances catapulted him into Kentucky Derby (G1) contention.
“He just had a lot of bad luck in his career,” explained Peacock. For example, a stall accident caused a rear right hock injury, which became infected. “But we stayed with him, and we were patient, and Todd and his team did a remarkable job of staying with the horse and giving him time when he needed time and working with him and getting him back to peak performance and it finally all came together for him.” Peacock Sr. passed away in 2021, and Senor Buscador racked up wins in the 2022 Ack Ack Stakes (G3) and 2023 San Diego Handicap (G2), rounding out last year with a second-place finish in the Cigar Mile Handicap (G2). “To be fair, we put him in the deep water, so to speak. We were trying to win grade 1, grade 2 races,” Peacock said. “We were convinced he had the talent; we just needed the right circumstances.”
In the Jan. 27 Pegasus Handicap (G1), Senor Buscador, now six, finished second behind National Treasure. “We were very, very pleased with his performance in that race. Again, he just ran out of racetrack,” Peacock said. A month later, Senor Buscador earned that elusive top-flight win in the Saudi Cup. “If you had to pick a grade 1 to win,” Peacock said, “he sure picked the right race. We always felt like the setup in the Saudi Cup was just ideal for us, because it was a mile and an eighth; we like that distance.” Team Senor Buscador also appreciated that the nine-furlong competition was over one turn. “So, we just thought the setup was ideal,” Peacock said. “There was a lot of speed in the race, which again favors a deep closer, and what we were told by a lot of people in the industry is that that track played fair.”
True to form, Senor Buscador closed late. Watching the Jumbotron in the paddock, Peacock said, “We never even saw the horse; we didn’t know where he was. He was getting no calls; they never called his name until they were 200 meters out from the finish line.” He added, “We saw him coming down the center of the racetrack and to be honest, it was hard to tell who won.”
Senor Buscador has now earned $11,496,427. “The horse just really hasn’t gotten much credit for his talent,” Peacock said. “He’s always trying hard. He’s getting close; he didn’t ever really win the big race, and nobody ever really talked about him.” He added, “So we just felt really, really happy about the fact that now everybody could see what we felt all along he was capable of.”
